Jason was confident that his current plan was good enough to bring in a huge fortune.
That was if he provided enough goods to sell.
It was not even that he was too full of himself but with his prices and the quality of his goods, it would be extremely weird if he would come out with a small profit or even a loss at the end of the month.
There were only two things he had to take care of for now.
Attract customers and prevent offending too many shops!
Jason thought that the first one was not hard to come by as long as his shop's goods retained their good quality.
Meanwhile, the second thing he had to pay attention to, was not that easy to cope with because it was evident that he would offend a few shops in the long run.
Some shops might not notice that anything was off in the beginning but once the Golden-Soul shop started to attract too much attention, customers would rather come to his shop than others.
This would reduce other shops' profits drastically and Jason was sure that some of them would try to slander him in any possible way.
However, that was bound to happen and Jason didn't really bother about it for now.
Instead, he would rather focus on the most important things for now; gathering popularity!
It was already 8 am when Jason finished explaining everything important to Emily and Silas who eyed the prices for everything in awe and shock before their attention was drawn to Jason.
After he told them that the 'expensive' prices they saw were already discounted and thus on sale, both couldn't contain themselves anymore and exclaimed in astonishment.
However, after that was done, Jason took out his 'exclusive' items, consisting of several dozen pseudo-mana grade-1 weapons and one mana-grade-1 Jadetide longsword.
If one were to look closer at the weapons, it wouldn't be difficult to come to the conclusion that each weapon was made by one blacksmith as every single one of them had the same flaws in them.
These flaws were minuscule and one could tell that every weapon was slightly better than the one before because there were fewer flaws in them.
The last four pseudo-mana grade-1 weapons were infinitely close to real mana-grade-1 weapons and it was only because of a small fluke in the forging process, that they were still considered pseudo-mana weapons.
Nevertheless, their price was still much higher than the pseudo-mana grade-1 dagger-set Jason forged on his first try to make mana-grade-1 weapons.
In the end, all weapons he forged used perfectly purified bars which increased their mana circulation and ignited the materials' full potential.
This prevented them from breaking to fast and becoming dull.
As such, Shane's mana-grade-1 longsword was worth 4,000,000 Credits which was comparable to the price of a well forged high-grade-2 weapon.
Yet, its price was still the average for common mana-grade-1 weapons.
Exhibiting the sword as his main attraction, Jason was sure that a few blacksmiths that might pass his shop would notice its value and start questioning who forged it.
These blacksmiths would either ask about the person who forged it to figure out the blacksmiths secret to create a mana-grade-1 weapon without a single flaw in its mana conductivity, or they would try to see if it was possible to lure such a blacksmith to their side.
There were many blacksmiths trying to oppose the Artisan tower due to multiple reasons, but the biggest obstacle against a riot against the Artisan tower were their connections and the number of prodigies they had under them.
Once Jason was done, he looked at Emily and Silas, whose eyes were shining brightly, which caused him to grin as he said
"You two don't have to be too euphoric right now. We don't even have customers yet.
To be honest, I doubt that anything special will happen today.
Just take it easy. Absorb mana or practice the Heaven's Hell technique until a customer comes in.
I don't think that they will remain inside the shop for long and they might even curse us about the prices. But please remember to remain kind and courteous!
If my estimation is not wrong, in around four days, the first few real customers might come by."
Hearing this, Emily and Silas looked at him in confusion, not knowing what exactly he tried to imply.
**
Only three days later, the two finally understood what Jason meant with his words.
There were many people who were interested in the Golden-Soul shop when it opened, but almost all of them cursed Jason, Emily, and Silas for being greedy or insane.
This was because they put such high prices for potions and forged bars, one could normally purchase for a tenth of the Golden-Soul shop's price.
Even the pseudo-magic weapons and mana weapon's price were too high according to these 'wise' citizens who labeled Jason as fraud.
Some of them even said that they would report him to the government.
Hearing this, Jason couldn't help but smile brightly behind his mask because these 'wise' citizens were nothing but pushovers after he released his killing intent before saying
"If Sir doesn't plan to purchase anything and has the intention to rant or curse me, Sir might as well leave my shop! NOW!"
Most citizens were astonished about him releasing killing intent, only because they were cursing a little bit inside his shop.
However, even after they heard that he asked them to leave, some citizens were reluctant and continued to curse about his exorbitant prices.
Using his physical strength of a 2nd Master rank, he picked these pushovers who were not proficient in fighting but also at the Master rank.
Showing his strength and decisiveness from the beginning, everyone understood that the Golden-Soul shop was not something they could take on just like that.
Their mana core rank might be on par with Jason's but the citizen were not completely stupid and understood that Jason had a high combat awareness.
Instead of actively cursing him, after getting to know how Jason acted with his 'dear' customers, most of them complained about his shop to the government.
After these 'wise' citizens which Jason threw out exaggerated the facts about the Golden-Soul shop to the government, they immediately send someone over to take a proper look.
Jason, who was astonished that the citizens acted like that after ranting inside his shop, couldn't help but shrug his shoulders when he saw a middle-aged man with short cut black hair and a short beard walking inside the shop.
The man wore the government's standardized uniforms, which the Jual family gave every single government worker according to their rank, with emblems embedded on it according to their specialization.
Seeing the emblem of a hammer striking on an anvil with four stars below, Jason couldn't help but think that the frustrating citizens played into his hands.
This emblem meant that the middle-aged man in front of him was an Advanced Blacksmith, commonly known as Rank-4 Blacksmith!
'This will be easier than I previously thought!' Jason thought confidently as he saw that the government worker looked around his shop, without saying anything.
He didn't even greet Jason as the owner and just inspected everything clearly.
When Emily and Silas saw the government worker, they were astonished and became nervous.
After calming them down with reassuring words, Jason decided that it was time to approach the middle-aged man, who noticed him.
"Hello Sir, how can I help you? Are you searching for something specific or just looking around?"
Trying to figure out Jason's mana core rank, the middle-aged man was astonished to sense that he couldn't see through it at all.
He was already at the Magus rank and still couldn't see through the black-masked man with a youthful voice?
Smiling lightly, the middle-aged man decided to disregard the citizens' complaints that were obviously exaggerated and faulty as he introduced himself.
"Hello, I'm Berg Brae and I came here to investigate the Golden-Soul shop to figure out if it will tarnish our city's reputation. However, after seeing the goods' prices, I can say for sure that they're definitely not shady or too expensive like reported.
I can tell that they're perfectly purified which is not something one can find often in our small B-grade city!
Rather than continuing a baseless investigation, I would like to purchase 100x perfect purified Jade-Iron bars and 50x energy replenishing potions! If that's possible."
'Even as a Rank-4 Blacksmith, I'm still unable to perfectly purify grade-1 Jade-Iron bars to such an extent! Maybe I can learn something from that and further improve my capabilities… Even if I can't comprehend anything out of it, I might as well use them myself to forge a weapon and make a huge profit or give it to my disciple!"
Jason just nodded his head as he said with a faint smile on his face.
"That would be 17,500,000 Credits. Thanks for being our first big Customer and I apologize for creating such a ruckus…"
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